Ummm

Just checked out the blog and discovered it has been more than a month since the last entry.

Ummm, yeah, a month.

Just in case there are still any readers out there, I'll try and recap the last five weeks.

Dad came out of hospital.  Dad went back into hospital.  Dad came out of hospital.  Dad went back to hospital. They changed one of his medications as it was dropping his heart rate too low (43 bpm) and he's out of hospital again, hopefully for the last time.  He is looking and sounding pretty much normal again.  I think the med he was on was making him really unwell cos now that he's off it, he's doing really, really well.  That's good.

The stuff going on in the background that I couldn't talk about last time is still going on in the background, and I still can't talk about it.  Why mention it then, I hear you ask?  Because it's eating up a lot of my brain (and heart) time at the moment.  It's a good thing/bad thing thing.  Can't quite make up my mind yet whether the good outweighs the bad or not.  It's pretty much out of my hands anyway so I'll stop wittering on about it.  There.  Stopped.

I've been trying, ever since Dad's heart attack, to shift some of the extra poundage that has accumulated over the years.  Before I could answer the "does anyone in your family suffer from heart disease" question with a No, now I can't.  It's that simple.  So I've been on the Next To No Fun Food Diet for about 4 weeks.  No McDonalds, no chocolate, no ice cream, no eating between meals, no biscuits, no cakes, no lollies, no chips (except for jumpy legs), no marmalade toast, I tried black coffee for a while but gave that up.  I don't cook any more, I just heat things up.  I don't bake any more either, so that fun part of life is dead.  I have *something* that counts as fun food about twice a week.  On a Friday afternoon The Other Half takes me out for a coffee at McCafe and I have something yum with it.  One other day a week I'll have something...something small and insignificant like a couple of squares of chocolate, but it's literally a couple of squares and it's once in the week.  That's about it.  Lunch is a cup of stock and two bits of dry bread.  mmmm.  It's a pretty drab and colourless life really, and it stretches off into infinity that is bleak and dreary.  And for all this I have shifted approximately 1.3kg.  In four weeks.  I sit down at the table hungry and get up from the table hungry and it's all for basically naught.  I wouldn't mind so much if there was an actual result, but so far it's nothing.  

Pity party over.

The kids are going great guns with school.  Chickabid has just begun his Year 5 maths book and is going through it like lightning.  He's just about to finish the level 4 grammar book and as soon as the next one is published we'll get stuck into that.  We're rocketing through history and have begun The Crusades - I am learning as much as the kids.  We've almost finished our Biblical Studies book and I'm trying to figure out where to go next in that.  We've finished Exploring Creation with Botany and have just started Flying Creatures of the Fifth Day. We're nearly finished our writing textbook and I have the next one ready to go. It's truly a season where I can say "we've finished ...".  It's a good feeling.  Ladybug has finished her grammar book and is working in the next one.  She's doing really, really well in her maths test book which is reviewing everything she's learned so far this year.  I've ordered the next book for her and it should come in the next few days.  We're making progress.

Chickabid's blanket is finished and in use.  Ladybug's blanket is 2/5 finished.  The house is passable in at least 1/3 rooms pretty much all the time now, but don't whatever you do look in the sink today.  I'm not joking ;)